Police prepare to swoop: Scotland Yard has launched a 'last chance' investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

Arrests in the Madeleine McCann case could be made within weeks by Scotland Yard detectives investigating 38 suspects.

Officers were last night preparing to swoop on individuals ‘scattered across Europe’ after announcing a full criminal probe.

They are enlisting the help of colleagues in five countries, including Britain and Portugal, to detain 38 ‘persons of interest’.

Among them are a dozen British nationals who were either visiting or living in the Algarve when Madeleine vanished in 2007.

Investigators said they had no prime suspect but had identified ‘genuinely new’ leads after a two-year, £5million review. They are convinced the three-year-old was abducted by a stranger and have uncovered no evidence that she was murdered.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, who is leading the inquiry, said: ‘We continue to believe that there is a possibility that Madeleine is alive.’

Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate, as well as their travelling friends known as the ‘Tapas Seven’, have all been ruled out as suspects.

The McCanns ‘warmly welcomed’ the decision to step up the police inquiry from a review to a full-blooded inquiry.

Their spokesman said: ‘They see it as a huge step forward in establishing what happened.’

Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the new developments in a case which 'still shocks the nation'.

Scotland Yard are launching a full international criminal probe in a bid to find Madeleine's abductor

Detectives who have launched an international investigation are convinced the three-year-old was abducted by a stranger and have uncovered no evidence that she has been murdered

Kate McCann has never given up hope that her daughter could still be alive

The 67-year-old, who kidnapped and murdered a five-year-old
girl less than three months after Madeleine was abducted, is one of many
suspects.

'This is the first we have heard of any deal to co-operate with the British police, and to be frank I don’t know how it is going to work'

Policia Judiciaria senior detective

He took his own life after killing his victim, who looked
remarkably like Madeleine.

But sources within Portugal’s
detective unit, the Policia Judiciaria, branded the inquiry as
‘political b*******’ that won’t work.

One senior detective told the Daily
Mail: ‘This is the first we have heard of any deal to co-operate with
the British police, and to be frank I don’t know how it is going to
work.

Portuguese police, pictured at the apartment in Praia da Luz, accused Madeleine's parents of being behind the child's disappearance

The beach at Praia de Luz in Portugal where Madeleine McCann went missing

The Portuguese authorities have refused to reopen their inquiry into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from The Ocean Club in Praia da Luz

Urs Hans Von Aesch (pictured right), a Swiss man who lived in Spain, killed himself in woodland outside Oberburon in Switzerland after abducting and killing five-year-old Ylenia Lenhard (left). Von Aesch has been named as one of many suspects linked to the Madeleine McCann investigation

The woodland shrine outside the Swiss town of Oberburon where five-year-old Ylenia Lenhard was abducted and killed by Urs Hans Von Aesch just months after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

Scotland Yard yesterday launched a last chance investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

‘British police may be allowed to sit
in on the interviews, with the prosecutor’s agreement, but they must not
interfere or ask questions themselves.

'Politics should not be allowed
to interfere with justice. That is b*******.’

Robert Murat, the British man who was
falsely accused of kidnapping Madeleine, said he feared vital evidence
may be lost for ever.

He said: ‘One of the biggest things that I really
don’t understand is why this hasn’t been done a long time ago.’

SIX YEARS ON AND STILL SEARCHING: KEY MOMENTS IN THE CASE

2007May 3 - Kate and Gerry McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, leave their three children asleep in their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in southern Portugal while they dine with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant. Nothing is amiss when Mr McCann checks on the youngsters at just after 9pm, but when his wife goes back at about 10pm she finds three-year-old Madeleine missing. Jane Tanner, one of the friends eating with the McCanns, later reports seeing a man carrying a child away earlier that night.

May 14 - Detectives take Anglo-Portuguese property developer Robert Murat in for questioning and make him an 'arguido', or formal suspect. Officers also search the home he shares with his mother in Praia Da Luz, just 100 yards from where the youngster vanished.

May 30 - Mr and Mrs McCann meet the Pope in Rome in the first of a series of trips around Europe and beyond to highlight the search for their daughter.

Scotland Yard detectives say there is a chance Madeleine McCann is still alive

August 6 - A Portuguese newspaper reports that British police sniffer dogs have found traces of blood on a wall in the McCanns' holiday apartment.

August 11 - Exactly 100 days after Madeleine disappeared, investigating officers publicly acknowledge for the first time that she could be dead.

September 7 - During further questioning of Mr and Mrs McCann, detectives make them both 'arguidos' in their daughter's disappearance.

September 9 - The McCanns fly back to England with their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

October 2 - Goncalo Amaral, the detective in charge of the inquiry, is removed from the case after criticising the British police in a Portuguese newspaper interview.

2008July 21 - The Portuguese authorities shelve their investigation and lift the "arguido" status of the McCanns and Robert Murat.

July 24 - Mr Amaral publishes a book about the case, entitled The Truth Of The Lie, in which he alleges that the young girl died in her family's holiday flat on the day she went missing.

August 4 - Thousands of pages of evidence from the Portuguese police files in the exhaustive investigation into Madeleine's disappearance are made public. They reveal details of the lines of inquiry pursued by detectives, witness statements and scores of previously unknown sightings of the little girl.

2009January 29 - Nearly £2 million was raised for the official fund to find Madeleine in the first 10 months after she went missing, Companies House accounts show.

September 9 - A Portuguese judge bans further sale or publication of Mr Amaral's book following legal action by Mr and Mrs McCann. This injunction is later upheld before being overturned on appeal.

Kate McCann and Gerry McCann marking the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of their daughter

2011May 12 - Mrs McCann publishes a book about her daughter's disappearance on Madeleine's eighth birthday. Scotland Yard launches a review of the case after a request from Home Secretary Theresa May supported by Prime Minister David Cameron.

2012April 25 - Scotland Yard detectives say they believe Madeleine could still be alive, release an age-progression picture of how she might look now as a nine-year-old, and call on the Portuguese authorities to reopen the case.

April 26 - Portuguese police say they have found no new material that will allow them to reopen their investigation.

May 3 - The fifth anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance.

July 10 - Kate McCann launches a nationwide campaign to find missing people. Mrs McCann, a new ambassador for the charity Missing People, launches a network of billboards which will publicise the cases of individuals whose whereabouts are no longer known.

November 30 - In the wake of the Leveson report, the couple urge Prime Minister David Cameron to embrace its findings, saying if he does not, then giving evidence at the inquiry will have been 'almost useless'.

December 21 - In a Christmas message on the Find Madeleine website, Kate and Gerry McCann say the festive season will 'never be as it should'.

2013February 6 - A DNA sample from a girl in New Zealand is sent to British police to quash the suggestion that she could be Madeleine McCann.

February 17 - The McCanns brand plans for a new press regulator backed by a Royal Charter 'a compromise of a compromise' that do not go far enough in holding the press to account.

February 21 - Retired solicitor Tony Bennett, 65, who published claims that Madeleine McCann's parents caused her death, receives a suspended jail sentence. Mr Justice Tugendhat said Bennett, of Harlow, Essex, deliberately flouted legal undertakings, given in November 2009, not to repeat allegations about the couple. Finding him guilty of contempt of court at London's High Court, he said Bennett's conduct was so serious that nothing less than a custodial sentence of three months suspended for one year would reflect the harm he had done.

May 1 - Mr and Mrs McCann say they have not given up hope in the search for their daughter, nearly six years after she vanished. Mrs McCann told the Press Association she believed Scotland Yard officers were "more determined than ever" to find what happened to her daughter.

May 3 - The sixth anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance.

May 17 - Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell from the Metropolitan Police reveals in an interview with the Evening Standard that the review team has identified at least 'a handful of people of interest' in the case.

June 21 - Prosecutors confirm that London's chief crown prosecutor Alison Saunders and her deputy Jenny Hopkins flew to Portugal with Scotland Yard detectives in April to discuss the case with their Portuguese counterparts.

July 4 - Scotland Yard confirms that it has launched its own investigation into Madeleine's disappearance two years into a review of the case. It has "genuinely new" lines of inquiry and has identified 38 people of interest, including 12 Britons. The force will work in partnership with Portuguese police in pursuing new leads.